Random Thoughts

I know virtually nothing about Andy Kaufman — I know that Laurie Anderson worked as his assistant for a time, but that’s about it.

I bought it because Julie Hecht has only written four books, and the other three are absolutely amazing, and have reviews like this:

I.e., perfect books.

Kaufman is usually presented as a “comedian and performance artist”, but he seems to me more like somebody really into practical jokes and winding people up. And Hecht isn’t necessarily very interested in veracity, either, so I have absolutely no idea to what degree the entire book is “true”. In any case, it’s presented as being mostly written in the late 70s, as an article for Harper’s Magazine that spun out of control and was never published back then.

But after Kaufman’s resurgent fame (a decade after his death, with a big autobio film — The Man on the Moon), Hecht has polished it up and published it as a book. It describes Hecht trying to interview Kaufman (and succeeding in the end; the last half of the book is 90% transcription of the tapes she made, apparently), but we also get bits like this:

So Kaufman (and his sidekick Bob Zmuda) were sadistic assholes, basically? I mean, a complex and conflicted person (note: code for “sadistic asshole”).

Hecht obviously liked the guy, and Laurie Anderson did, too, so he can’t be all bad, but the description of his routines (like the one where he read The Great Gatsby until the audience started pelting him) really remind me of that 30 Rock bit where they had a documentary on about 70s transgressive humour? Combined with a portion of modern “it’s just a prank, bro”.

Sorry, sorry — I know there’s lots of people who love Kaufman’s stuff. I just don’t respond well to cringe humour.

Anyway. It’s a good book — it’s funny and kinda exciting.

Was this man a genius? (2001) by Julie Hecht (buy used, 3.72 on Goodreads)

I’ve loved Katchor’s comics since the 80s — they’re all perfect and puzzling — they create their own magical world.

This isn’t a comic book, though, but instead a 470 page illustrated book. Let’s have a look.

So we start off with a retelling of the story of the Garden of Eden, and here my problems start already: I just don’t know from this stuff. I mean, I know that it’s supposed to be a garden with an apple tree, and here Katchor has a date tree. But I have no idea whether he’s 1) being satirical, 2) totes blasphemous, 3) presenting an alternative, also valid story or 4) just goofing off. I’m so non-religious that I just can’t tell.

Katchor seems to be writing a polemical text, as far as I can tell from the way many things are phrased, but I just don’t know what he’s arguing against. And the text isn’t funny enough in and of itself — I think this book just isn’t for me. If you were to write a book specifically designed to not have me as the target audience, I think this would be that book.

(Except for the artwork, which is, of course, very nice.)

From what I remember of the Cain and Abel thing, this seems like a fair recap, I guess? Isn’t it?

Were there two sets of tablets in the bible stories? Hmm. Yeah, I think so? Are there differing traditions as to whether they contained different sets of laws?

OK, OK, I’m going to stop — this book isn’t for me, and after reading 50 pages, I skipped the rest.

That is, I skipped ahead a lot, and … this seems to be an overview of dairy restaurants in New York? I’m sure Katchor made his way from the Bible to New York in the 400 pages between somehow…

The Dairy Restaurant (2007) by Ben Katchor (buy new, buy used, 3.60 on Goodreads)

I’ve noted that young people today (even people that seem pretty cool) apparently have no anxiety around liking stuff that’s popular — even stuff that’s so popular that they may have seen it on regular TV. It sometimes seems to be the opposite way — you see people apologising both for not adoring whatever is popular, or for liking something obscure. These kids are crazy!

Well, I’m old, so I have crippling anxiety around liking something that’s not obscure enough, so when I got this book, and I saw that “Inaugural Poet for Barack Obama” I was horrified! How uncool! That thing was shown on TV! People have heard of her!

But I didn’t notice when I bought it! But I bought a different edition! But officer, I wasn’t even present when I bought this!

The reason I bought this is this:

She wrote the lyrics to and performed on Watermelon City by DJ /rupture. It’s a cool track:

It’s so cool that there isn’t even a separate upload of the track on Youtube — I have to point you to the entire album (529 views).

(The rest of the album is also good, though, so you can just listen to the entire thing, really.)

But no matter how embarassing, I guess I have to read the book sooner or later, so I might as well read it now. *hangs head in shame*

And I’m sorry to have to report that this is a very good collection. Sometimes somebody who’s well-known makes something good! I know! Whodathunk!

I don’t think there’s a weak poem in the book, but some are better than others — I particularly liked this one, but there were a lot of them I really enjoyed.

So what does Goodreads think? Here’s the top review:

But it’s poetry, so there’s just four (4) reviews in total anyway.

Body of Life: Poems (1996) by Elizabeth Alexander (buy new, buy used, 3.70 on Goodreads)

I’m at the tail end of a cold here, so it felt like the perfect time to bundle up on the couch with a Bujold book. I’ve read this a couple times before, but the last time is at least 15 years ago, so I remembered virtually nothing about this book.

And it’s just what the doctor ordered. It’s a delight to read — amusing, exciting, well-written. It’s all that good stuff. And now my cold is gone!

One thing I did notice this time around was how utterly dependent on happenstance and coincidence Bujold was in this novel. I mean, the protagonist goes halfway across the galaxy and just happens to meet up with [redacted], like one does. And then happens to meet a spaceship piloted by [redacted]. And so on. It’s so shameless that it almost reminds me of (early) P. G. Wodehouse — sometimes he really couldn’t be bothered to think out anything resembling a plot, so he’d just have everybody stumbling over each other in various cities.

I mean, I’m not complaining — the random coincidences add a certain something to the proceedings.

It’s good fun — I was smiling the entire time I was reading this.

The Vor Game (1990) by Lois McMaster Bujold (buy used, 4.27 on Goodreads)